Getting Started with VR

[ΔLEX]

If there is some specific information related to VR development that you feel is missing from our documentation or tutorials...

Hello!
I've recently started developing in VR and i have some question-marks that need some clarifying.
About the

MarketPlace

items and assets

... are they all

supported

and

compatible

with VR?
Let's say i buy a character or a landscape asset, will it work with VR?

[Alexander Paschall]

Let's say i buy a character or a landscape asset, will it work with VR?

That depends on the asset, they will say on the pack's description if it was built for VR. You can see if the pack is built for VR by looking at the "Supported Platforms" section of the Content Details. You can take a lot of packs that don't say they are VR ready and still use them, but there isn't a guarantee that they will work as you would expect. Some packs include tutorials to convert the asset to be VR compatible even though it is not by default. Overall VR-assets are just assets built to be light-weight and low-demand for the hardware.

[ΔLEX]

1. Does a VR asset being compatible and supported by Win Platform depend on it being light-weight and low-demand on the hardware?
-or
Is there some kind of build design differences between a normal asset and a VR asset, like some settings of UE4, etc. ?
(You don't have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to this question.)

2. Is there some kind of tutorial on converting assets to VR for oculus and vive?
-or
A general configuration or workflow that must be respected when the project is first started in UE4, in order to work?
(You don't have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to this question.)

Mention: i have read the Virtual Reality Documentation provided but feel free to point to it if the case need be.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest.../VR/index.html

[indygoof]

1. Does a VR asset being compatible and supported by Win Platform depend on it being light-weight and low-demand on the hardware?
-or
Is there some kind of build design differences between a normal asset and a VR asset, like some settings of UE4, etc. ?
(You don't have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to this question.)

2. Is there some kind of tutorial on converting assets to VR for oculus and vive?
-or
A general configuration or workflow that must be respected when the project is first started in UE4, in order to work?
(You don't have to be too specific, but please give me some pointers to this question.)

Mention: i have read the Virtual Reality Documentation provided but feel free to point to it if the case need be.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest.../VR/index.html

In general, you can use all the same assets. The only real differences for VR are:
- performance and performance. Things that run with 30fps on a mid-range pc are simply to high fidelity for VR, since you basically need to render 2 images each frame, with a total of 90 fps. As a very rough estimate you could playtest in editor, do a "stat fps" command and check that you are always above 200fps.
- things that have a deadly impact on VR performance are Translucency (i.e. water), reflections (i.e. water, metal) and dynamic lighting / shadows.
- you can still buy existing assets and optimize them yourself; usually you can simplify materials used (i.e. Parallax Occlusion / Pixel Offset Materials are highly demanding and should be replaced by rather flat materials). If you are building rather small levels (meaning, no open world stuff) you wont run into an issue with polys too fast, but you can play around with minimum LODs just in case then.
- take care with foliage and static lighting, as often foliage will look rather dark / black without dynamic lights. But you could play around with GI and Lighting Diff Boost for these to get better results
- You wont need a special configuration, just make sure to execute a "stereo on" command on startup of the first level.

As you see, you have most things in your own hands, like minimizing translucency, disable dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows, remove all reflections. Basically you would need to do basic Optimizations like in the good old times when each 0.1ms saved on the render thread was a reason to party; People seem to have forgotten these times, fill the levels with effects and polys and full dynamic lighting and wonder why the performance is bad.

If the asset you are buying has no LODs for it's models but a high poly count, thats the only thing then you wouldnt be able to reduce yourself (without external tools), so if in doubt, ask the marketplace seller if everything has multiple LODs (most should have) before buying.

Cheers,
Indy

[svpro]

Here is a article that tell you how to make you own virtual reality glasses.

[Kratos_88]

http://www.pidjin.net/2014/03/27/early-adopters/
offtopic but on theme
Have to share this with somebody

[Lysergy]

I've been through the GoogleVR Quick Start instructions and basically all worked fine.

However one issue I am getting is that the outlines of objects are horribly jagged and pixelated looking. It's not an issue with resolution on my device (Nexus 6P with Android 7) because the jaggedness is at a resolution equivalent to several device pixels, and also surface shading and clouds in the sky sphere look really quite good. The only thing I initially changed from the project created from the instructions was to drag a few primitive meshes into the scene.

I have tried various settings to attempt to resolve this, e.g. anti-aliasing options, but haven't found anything that makes much difference.

Have others been experiencing similar and any ideas of how to fix it?

[brandon2321]

great article on getting started
http://galacticbrief.com/index.php/2...rtual-reality/

[Alexander Paschall]

On multiplayer for VR, here's some tips from our dev team.

The general gist of how to set it up is:

• Make sure that the CameraComponent has bLockToHMD true for the owning client only. This will make sure that the owning client uses his own HMD position at all time. Make sure bLockToHMD is false for all non-owning clients. This will mean their camera will do nothing, by default.
• Every tick, get the CameraComponent's relative transform on the owning client, and replicate that to the server via a server replicated event
• Replicate that to client from the server, via a multicast event
• In that multicast event on the client, set the CameraComponent's RelativeTransform to the one that was replicated.
• Repeat the same process for motion controllers, if needed! They don't need the bLockToHMD flag though.

Voila! Lots of people have done this in UE4, and there was even a Stanford course (CS211) that was offered that was all about multiplayer in UE4 with VR. LayoutVR also made a whole course on that, and has a great set of lessons, if people want to sign up (http://layoutvr.com/).

Also, don't forget to check out Couch Knights on the launcher's Learn tab for a pre-made online VR experience you can take apart and learn from. Though it was built for DK2, it still uses replication in a way that is relevant for modern VR systems.

[motorsep]

On multiplayer for VR, here's some tips from our dev team.

Recently people in #ue-vr on Discord said that replication isn't working for controllers (or something like that). Maybe a training stream about high performance multiplayer VR with motions controllers (Vive or Touch) using Blueprints would be a good idea? (after Thanksgiving)

[eXi]

On multiplayer for VR, here's some tips from our dev team.

The general gist of how to set it up is:

• Make sure that the CameraComponent has bLockToHMD true for the owning client only. This will make sure that the owning client uses his own HMD position at all time. Make sure bLockToHMD is false for all non-owning clients. This will mean their camera will do nothing, by default.
• Every tick, get the CameraComponent's relative transform on the owning client, and replicate that to the server via a server replicated event
• Replicate that to client from the server, via a multicast event
• In that multicast event on the client, set the CameraComponent's RelativeTransform to the one that was replicated.
• Repeat the same process for motion controllers, if needed! They don't need the bLockToHMD flag though.

Voila! Lots of people have done this in UE4, and there was even a Stanford course (CS211) that was offered that was all about multiplayer in UE4 with VR. LayoutVR also made a whole course on that, and has a great set of lessons, if people want to sign up (http://layoutvr.com/).

Also, don't forget to check out Couch Knights on the launcher's Learn tab for a pre-made online VR experience you can take apart and learn from. Though it was built for DK2, it still uses replication in a way that is relevant for modern VR systems.

This is basically what everyone tried to do to work around it.

Get the 3 Transforms on the Local Client, push them to the Server and let the Server update everyone else.

Just how you would imagine that it works. Thanks for sharing though! (:

If someone has time, try it out and see if the VR stuff replicates properly.

[Program-Ace]

We've made this demo VR maze for HTC Vive at Program-Ace with Unreal Engine. It's quite a simple project, it took about a week, but still quite impressive

[kristijanmirceta]

On multiplayer for VR, here's some tips from our dev team.

The general gist of how to set it up is:

• Make sure that the CameraComponent has bLockToHMD true for the owning client only. This will make sure that the owning client uses his own HMD position at all time. Make sure bLockToHMD is false for all non-owning clients. This will mean their camera will do nothing, by default.
• Every tick, get the CameraComponent's relative transform on the owning client, and replicate that to the server via a server replicated event
• Replicate that to client from the server, via a multicast event
• In that multicast event on the client, set the CameraComponent's RelativeTransform to the one that was replicated.
• Repeat the same process for motion controllers, if needed! They don't need the bLockToHMD flag though.

Voila! Lots of people have done this in UE4, and there was even a Stanford course (CS211) that was offered that was all about multiplayer in UE4 with VR. LayoutVR also made a whole course on that, and has a great set of lessons, if people want to sign up (http://layoutvr.com/).

Also, don't forget to check out Couch Knights on the launcher's Learn tab for a pre-made online VR experience you can take apart and learn from. Though it was built for DK2, it still uses replication in a way that is relevant for modern VR systems.

Thanks a lot for this info. Does anybody maybe know how I could take the Stanford course if I'm not a student there? Is this even possible?

[Devgroup]

I'm sorry but the forum and the answerhub seems dead, can someone please put a few minutes on my problem and attempt to help me?
I'm trying to help others as well so it would really be nice to get some help back.
Here's my problem: https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...184#post681184

[Hanniball777]

Hey guys,
i have a quite basic question. Till now i used a template to use the HTC VIVE in my project, the Proteus Template. It is awesome, but i would like to know how to migrate the hands and the added functions and stuff like in the VR Template "Motion Controller Map" instead. The template doesn't run good with the 4.15 and i would have to replace it with the 2.1 anyway.
Which files do i need and what do i have to change in my project?
Thank you very much for your help!